Kickstarter Korner for November 2018, Week 4

Each week during the Quests & Adventures live chat, Saturday at 2 p.m. eastern, Nerdarchists Dave and Ted and Nate the Nerdarch hang out live with fans from the Nerdarchy YouTube channel. It’s a chance to share announcements and news, answer questions from the live chat and generally just hang out and talk nerdy with the Nerdarchy community.

In the description of each weekly video, Nerdarchist Ted compiles a list and links to all the videos and website content from the week. But he also shares a selection of cool Kickstarter campaigns. As an avid Kickstarter supporter, he’s happy to share his favorite RPG and gaming-related Kickstarters with you, the Nerdarchy community. Enjoy!

Protip: Before our video shoot this weekend, I was talking with Nerdarchist Ted and we got on the topic of Dungeon Master anxiety. You know, the feeling you get right before you run a game of D&D where you spontaneously forget all your past experiences running games and dread what might go wrong no matter how much you prepared ahead of time.

What if the players do something or go the character go somewhere and you aren’t prepared? What if you can’t think of anything to say in response? WHAT IF THEY DON’T HAVE A GOOD TIME PLAYING?!

Ted explained how he gets DM anxiety not only before but after a game, too. Thinking of things he wished he’d done differently, or stuff he’d planned but forgot about in the moment. I can relate.

We got to talking about this initially through wondering why more people don’t try running games (a scenario that I feel is changing these days). Being a DM may seem like a really difficult undertaking, and there’s folks out there who will say it is incredibly hard. It’s understandable that a person could be intimidated by the idea of running a game.

You don’t have to be. The trick to being a DM is an easy one, and this may sound glib, but the big secret is…just do it. Find a one shot idea or adventure hook online (there’s tons of them here on our website), grab a published adventure, Google Matt Colville Delian Tomb, roll up a random adventure and dungeon with tables and charts in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, or even just ask the players what their characters want to do.

It might seem really scary at first, and you will experience your own bout of DM anxiety. And there’s a good chance after the game ends you’ll over-analyze yourself and the decisions you made during play.

The thing about being a DM is we all go through these times. Me, Nerdarchists Dave and Ted, Matt Mercer and Chris Perkins and Jerry Holkins and countless others.

There’s another side to it, too. The time between those feelings of anxiety — when you’re playing. When players show up to your game and get to collaborate with you to weave tales of triumph and loss, narrow escapes and heroic victory, have some laughs, share some tears and roll some dice, that’s what being a DM is about. It’s not all the prep work, the minis, the complex world or the character voices. It’s you, bringing a group of people together for a common purpose. Not just the characters, who join together in a party to go on an adventure. It’s the players too, who you welcome to the table. They’re your friends, co-workers, family members or even strangers at the game store or online. And they know, just like you, all the uncertainty and self-conscious feelings bookending a game of D&D.

So whether you’ve run a thousand games of D&D or none, give it a shot, try it out one more time and give a group of friends something to remember together. The DM anxiety will be there, sure, but so will all the fun and fantastic memories that come along with it.

Nerditor-in-Chief Doug Vehovec is a proud native of Cleveland, Ohio, with D&D in his blood since the early 80s. Fast forward to today and he’s still rolling those polyhedral dice. When he’s not DMing, world building, or working on endeavors for Nerdarchy or his own blog The Long Shot, he’s a newspaper designer, copy editor and journalist. He loves advocating the RPG hobby and connecting with other nerds and gamers on social media and his site thelongshotist.com.

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Nerditor-in-Chief Doug Vehovec is a proud native of Cleveland, Ohio, with D&D in his blood since the early 80s. Fast forward to today and he’s still rolling those polyhedral dice. When he’s not DMing, world building, or working on endeavors for Nerdarchy or his own blog The Long Shot, he’s a newspaper designer, copy editor and journalist. He loves advocating the RPG hobby and connecting with other nerds and gamers on social media and his site thelongshotist.com.